More work on Kirby. Expanded refuel facility. - I needed a building for the office, so I took strip stryene and made a box. Door cut out. Decorative strip along the top and door from old stuff. This week, I will add details, paint, weather, etc. It will be much improved. - I thought I would add this as it is so simple and completely scratchbuilt. As a beginner, it is a good place to start. Most all of the track has been ballasted. More pictures of that later.
Overall view of Kirby after this week's work: The retaining wall runs about six feet of the length of Kirby (which is about 15 feet). The area where the B&O car is located is in another section of the layout. The retaining wall is the only indication of this as I did not want any large view breaks. The whole layout all flows together visually as operates as a single entity. - View from the other side:
up mike: The sidings are 13 feet; the peninsula is 23 feet. Because it is unfinished and there were some track problems, I haven't used it for operations yet. At the real Kirby, trains on the Sunset Route refuel there and/or change crews. It is a great railfan spot, but UP has started watching their property line very closely. A highway parallels the whole area, so you can park nearby and walk. It is about 1.5 miles long and has four refueling tracks. The whole yard area in Kirby is about 10 tracks deep. Something that definitely has to be compressed for the layout.
I love it, just amazing the scale of your layout and the new fueling scene. That thing could be the center of a medium size club!
Okay, Kirby fuel office sort of done. Here is the white box: - Here is the finished building before weathering and adding surrounding foliage: Pretty nice for a quick one day scratchbuild. No commercial parts except the TV antenna, so saves a little money. The big thing in buildings is to cut and assemble them square, square, square. Otherwise you are forever making slight adjustments.
Loco1999: This is a small building, so I did not use a 90 degree cutting tool. But, I do use a regular T-square to guide the knife. That is okay when you don't have long seams to align. Here is the fuel off load facility for Kirby. All of these fuel areas are made with low profile items to facilitate track cleaning and maintenance. This is not prototypical for the real Kirby, Texas. -
The fuel stains on the concrete slabs look outstanding . And that building is WAY COOL. Long live the Espee!! Have you weathered it yet?
I was going to say something about that. It is a small amount of acrylic artist's paint (charcoal color) mixed with "Rustall." I put the paint down and then flood it with the Rustall. Discovered by accident, of course! Haven't weathered it yet. Holding off for foliage or something. I am just not firm yet about what I want to do with it.
